Abstract
When Caroline Spurgeon, professor of English literature at Bedford College, London, stepped off her ocean liner in New York, the end of World War I was imminent. It was October 12, 1918, and armistice negotiations with Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire would begin two days later; Germany’s capitulation was only a matter of time. Caroline Spurgeon had traveled from Britain to the United States to further the Allied war effort against the Central Powers. Along with her younger colleague Rose Sidgwick, a lecturer in ancient history at Birmingham University, Spurgeon was part of the official British Educational Mission: a committee of seven respected British university lecturers that had been appointed by the Foreign Office in summer 1918 and was in the United States at the invitation of the US government and the American Emergency Council on Education. 1 The committee’s task was to visit 46 American colleges and universities over the subsequent six weeks and, based on their observations, to draw up proposals for enhancing exchange between British and American students, teachers, and scholars. The initiative ultimately sought to disengage the United States from its close academic ties with the German Reich.
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Notes
See Eckhardt Fuchs and Matthias Schulze, “Globalisierung und transnationale Zivilgesellschaft in der Ära des Völkerbundes,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 54, no. 10 (2006): 837–40.
On the concept of civil society, see Jürgen Kocka, “Zivilgesellschaft als historisches Problem und Versprechen,” in Europäische Zivilgesellschaft in Ost und West: Begriff, Geschichte, Chancen, ed. Manfred Hildermeier, Jürgen Kocka, and Christoph Conrad (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2000), 13–39.
For the history of international organizations more generally, see Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
Mary Nolan, The Transatlantic Century: Europe and America, 1890–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
The impact of growing international interest in the historical study of transnational “flows, ties, and appropriations” can be seen in Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History: From the Mid-19th Century to the Present Day (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
An extensive literature exists on the debate over the benefits and limitations of transnational historiography in Germany. See, especially, Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Das Kaiserreich transnational: Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006)
Gunilla-Friederike Budde, Transnationale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006)
Berthold Unfried, Jürgen Mittag, and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Transnationale Netzwerke im 20: Jahrhundert historische Erkundungen zu Ideen und Praktiken, Individuen und Organisationen (Leipzig: Akademische Verlags-Anstalt, 2008).
See the essay collections edited by Lee Ann Banaszak, The U.S. Women’s Movement in Global Perspective (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
Kimberly Jensen and Erika Kuhlman, Women and Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters Publishing, 2010)
Rumi Yasutake, Transnational Women’s Activism: The United States, Japan, and Japanese Immigrant Communities in California, 1859–1920 (New York: New York University Press, 2004)
Susan Zimmermann, “The Challenge of Multinational Empire for the International Women’s Movement: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Development of Feminist Inter/National Politics,” Journal of Women’s History 17, no. 2 (2005): 87–117.
See Marie Sandell, “‘Truly International’? The International Federation of University Women’s Quest for Expansion in the Interwar Period,” History of Education Researcher 82 (2008): 74–83
Christy Jo Snider, “Creating a Transnational Identity: The International Federation of University Women Confronts Racial and Religious Membership Restrictions in the 1930s,” in Women and Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective, ed. Kimberly Jensen and Erika Kuhlman (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters Publishing, 2010), 193–218
Joyce Goodman, “International Citizenship and the International Federation of University Women Before 1939,” History of Education 40, no. 6 (2011): 701–21
Joyce Goodman, “Women and International Intellectual Co-operation,” Paedagogica Historica 48, no. 3 (2012): 357–68.
Here, mention must be made primarily of the groundbreaking studies by Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America, vol. 1: Struggles and Strategies, 1870–1940 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) and vol. 2: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
For Britain, see Carol Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870–1939 (London: UCL Press, 1995).
For the Netherlands, see Mineke Bosch, Het Geslacht van de wetenschap (Amsterdam: Sua, 1994); for Germany
Patricia M. Mazon, Gender and the Modern Research University: The Admission of Women to German Higher Education, 1865–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003)
Trude Maurer, ed., Der Weg an die Universität: Höhere Frauenstudien vom Mittelalter bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010).
For an overview of research in the history of science from a gender and women’s perspective, see Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and Helen Longino, “The Women, Gender, and Science Question: What Do Research on Women in Science and Research on Gender and Science Have to Do with Each Other?” in Women, Gender, and Science: New Directions, ed. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and Helen E. Longino (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997): 3–15.
In the German literature, especially, points of contact are rare between the histories of gender, science, and women’s movements. On the history of the German women’s movement, see Barbara Greven-Aschoff, Die bürgerliche Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1894–1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981)
Ute Gerhard and Ulla Wischermann, Unerhört: Die Geschichte der deutschen Frauenbewegung (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1996)
Iris Schröder, Arbeiten für eine bessere Welt: Frauenbewegung und Sozialreform 1890–1914 (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2001)
Angelika Schaser, Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1848–1933 (Darmstadt: WBC Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006).
For Britain: Linda Walker, The Women’s Movement in Britain, 1790–1945 (London: Routledge, 2006)
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (London: Routledge, 2006).
For the United States: Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999)
Eleanor Flexner and Ellen F. Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).
See Karen Offen, European Feminisms, 1700–1950: A Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000)
Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)
Margaret H. McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999).
An excellent exception is Molly M. Wood, “‘Commanding Beauty’ and ‘Gentle Charm’: American Women and Gender in the Early Twentieth-Century Foreign Service,” Diplomatic History 31, no. 3 (2007): 505–30.
On transnational aspects of higher education, see Anja Werner, The Transatlantic World of Higher Education: Americans at German Universities, 1776–1914 (London: Berghahn, 2013).
Christophe Charle, Jürgen Schriewer, and Peter Wagner, eds., Transnational Intellectual Networks: Forms of Academic Knowledge and the Search for Cultural Identities (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2004) focuses exclusively on male networks.
Other examples of a cultural history of international relations include Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000)
Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sound Diplomacy: Music and Emotions in Transatlantic Relations, 1850–1920 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs 1 (1975): 1–29.
See also Blanche Wiesen Cook, “Female Support Networks and Political Activism: Lillian Wald, Crystal Eastman, Emma Goldman,” in A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women, ed. Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 412–44
Mineke Bosch and Annemarie Kloosterman, eds., Politics and Friendship: Letters from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902–1942 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990)
Leila J. Rupp, “Women’s History in the New Millennium: Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s ‘The Female World of Love and Ritual’ after 25 Years,” Journal of Women’s History 12, no. 3 (2000): 8–9.
Edith Saurer, “Frauenbewegung und soziale Netzwerke. Kommentar,” in Das Jahrhundert des Feminismus: Streifzüge durch nationale und internationale Bewegungen und Theorien, ed. Anja Weckwert and Ulla Wischermann (Königstein: Helmer, 2006), 77–94.
On the ways that women took on this originally masculine concept of friendship during the nineteenth century, see Kirsten Heinsohn, Politik und Geschlecht: Zur politischen Kultur bürgerlicher Frauenvereine in Hamburg (Hamburg: Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte, 1997).
See Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, Many a Good Crusade: Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 135, 189.
Elizabeth Crawford, “The Universe of International Science, 1880–1939,” in Solomon’s House Revisited: The Organization and Institutionalization of Science, ed. Tore Frängsmyr (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1990), 251–69
Eckhardt Fuchs, “Wissenschaftsinternationalismus in Kriegs- und Krisenzeiten. Zur Rolle der USA bei der Reorganisation der internationalen ‘Scientific Community,’ 1914–1925,” in Wissenschaft und Nation in der europäischen Geschichte, ed. Ralph Jessen and Jakob Vogel (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2002), 263–84. With respect to the IFUW, I would dispute Crawford’s view.
David N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 89.
Maria Rentetzi, Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
Elise Richter, Summe des Lebens, hg. vom Verband der Akademikerinnen Österreichs (Vienna: WUV Universitätsverlag, 1997).
On the suspension of access to this archival material, see also Susan Cohen, “‘Now You See Them, Now You Don’t’: The Archives of the Refugee Committee of the British Federation of University Women,” in Refugee Archives: Theory and Practice, ed. Andrea Hammel, Anthony Grenville, and Sharon Krummel (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 109–28.
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von Oertzen, C. (2012). Introduction. In: Science, Gender, and Internationalism. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438904_1
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